Just an idea

[Cyrien]

Ok. ignore this one... double post. SO I will just save you the spam by deleting the text.

[This message has been edited by Cyrien (edited 03 October 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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I think it is impossible to have a ship by ship morale rating unless as I read in another thread, a retreat option is added to the tactical battle. The reason being is that if you lose, the ship is destroyed. Very few ships would actually suffer from bad morale. You are either alive or dead. It is probably impossible to even have a fleet morale rating. Well, I mean you can have one, but it would be worthless...never being negative.

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That's why the decrease in morale has to be something like: -5% for ships in the same system as a lost battle, and -2% for ships in the entire empire.
Losing individual ships could say, reduce morale in the sector by 1%. If the ship was Elite, its loss could reduce morale 2% in the sector, and 1% system wide, and if the ship was legendary, morale would drop 3% in the sector, 2% system wide, and 1% empire wide.

That way, fighting a grinding war with heavy losses on both sides would destroy everybody's morale, and your legendary Flagship would have some strategic importance.
For example, destroying two Legendary ships while they are being retrofitted (even if you lose the battle) will still get you a big morale advantage, which you could use to win an evenly matched fleet action.
Racial happiness should probably affect morale, just like it works on planetary happiness.

[chewy027]

that sounds like a pretty equal way of doing it SJ along with a few other modifiers added in.

[Menschenfresser]

Excellent, SJ. That sounds like a perfect solution, and incorporating exp. into the mix is brilliant.

The whole key here is to make morale seriously hurt or help an empire. If it just provides a slight advantage or disadvantage it won't have much impact. And of course, the option to turn it off should be there.

[mac5732]

I also agree with what Menschenfreser said earlier about AI opponets and morale & experience. A human would take advantage of these but there would have to be some changes to get the AI to do the same in these areas as a human would, These ideas are great but we have to watch that a balance is struck between human & AI opponets. If the human player uses it and the AI is so so in these areas we could have a major imbalance of play. Also what about those races that have warrior, berserker, etc traits, I would think that due to their style they would start at a higher morale and experience level because of their trait. Also when they win, levels go up higher, but when they lose maybe an above average drop. On the same hand those that are peaceful or pacifist in nature would have lower levels in these areas as well.

just some ideas mac

[chewy027]

mac i don't think that a pcifist or peaceful empire should necessarily have a lower morale. They should be slower to loose morale but also slower to gain. Having a lower morale doesn't really make sense to me. On the flip side, the warriors and berserkers. They should be quicker to gain and quicker to loose.

As for the AI maybe they could gain a large increase in morale when winning a battle against a human as opposed to another AI

[Suicide Junkie]

That would probably fall under the AI bonus multiplier (none/low/medium/high).

All you've gotta do is decide on what a reasonable bonus factor is for each level.